Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a robot system with a transport device and a robot.
Description of the Prior Art
Surgical robots have become firmly established in various fields of surgery. Among others, the possible applications of surgical robots include placing pedicle screws, navigated biopsies in the field of neurosurgery, as well as endoscopic telesurgery.
In order to be able to respond to the ever changing tasks and possible applications in robotic surgery, robot systems have to be of a flexible design.
Typical robot systems fixedly installed in an operating theatre (OR) are thereby considerably limited in their flexibility. The space required for fixedly installed robot systems is not available in the often constricted ORs even if the robot system is not in use. Thereby, the operating theatre staff is unnecessarily hindered in performing its work. At the same time, in this case, the robot system cannot be used for another purpose for the duration of the surgery. In particular, the fixedly installed robot system cannot be used for another operation. Further, retrofitting an existing OR with fixedly installed robot systems causes considerable reconstruction costs. Moreover, during maintenance work on a fixedly installed robot system, the corresponding OR cannot be used, whereby the number of operations that can be carried out there is lowered and thereby a hospital's profit is reduced. In addition, with fixedly installed robot systems, the range of a robot arm of the robot system is defined, so that the accessibility of a surgical area by the robot cannot be changed afterwards. This restriction in accessibility can be counteracted by providing a rail system along which the robot is displaceably mounted. However, retrofitting the rail system in existing ORs requires considerable effort and costs.
On the other hand, the bases of the robots have to be fixed securely during an operation, so as to achieve the required precision during the surgical procedures and to exclude any risk to the patient. In this regard, the fixation has to be capable not only to bear the weight, but also to absorb all forces and moments of the moving robot and to keep its position and orientation as exactly as possible during the process. This results in high requirements on the fastening of the robot.
It is particularly preferred to fasten the robot system to the surgical table, since relative movements between the robot base and the surgical table can thereby be avoided, the robots are close to the surgical area and every change in the vertical adjustment or the inclination of the surgical table is automatically carried out in line. A robot system connected with a rail system of a surgical table is known from U.S. Pat. No. 5,553,198, for example. Feasibly, the existing surgical tables are still used so that a hospital can save the costs of a modification or even the acquisition of new surgical tables. A suitable fastening element, either provided as a standard feature of almost all surgical tables or can be retrofitted, is represented by the lateral rails of surgical tables, standardized according to DIN EN ISO 19054. Their specific design and their mechanical strength are defined by the standard, whereby the construction of a universally useable fastening mechanism is drastically simplified.
A fastening to rail systems, in particular to existing rail systems, is cumbersome with common robot systems, since they require in particular a manual fixation for which the robot must first be carried to the rail by the operation theatre staff and must then be connected to the rail. Such a robot system is known for example from U.S. Pat. No. 8,313,070. In many instances, fastening to the rail system, in particular an existing rail system, requires a tool and is further hindered by the robot system's sterile plastic cover necessary during surgery. Further, manual fastening bears the risk of dropping the robot or of the robot falling due to an incorrect fastening. This could lead to substantial damage to the robot, or the patient and the operation theatre staff could be hurt, respectively.